786: It's a Game Show!
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Prologue: Prologue
Ira Glass
OK, so we're going to try something different today. Something we have never tried on our show. And I got the idea for this from a conversation that I had with Jiayang Fan. Jiayang did a story for our show a little while back. And she's not somebody who's normally on the radio. She's a magazine writer.
And so when time came for her to record her script, she sat in the studio with one of our producers, Diane Wu, who had her read. And you know, it's a weird thing to sound, like, relaxed and natural while reading words off a page in a totally soundproof room, hearing your voice on headphones. And Diane did with Jiayang what we always do. She'd tell her, you know, go back and do that sentence a little looser. Or you know, underline this word or whatever. And that just hit something in Jiayang in this way that doesn't usually happen.
Jiayang Fan
Having a fellow Asian-American who looks exactly like me coach me through that process, hearing exactly how much more American she sounded than me, it made me think anew about my voice and the way I speak English.
Ira Glass
OK. I have a bunch of things to say to that. First of all, this idea that you and Diane look exactly the same, that's racist. You do not.
Jiayang Fan
Fair point. Fair point.
Ira Glass
And then it's interesting to me that you perceived it as--
Jiayang has thought a lot about the way that she speaks English and the way that others do, going back to when she was seven years old and she came to the United States from China. This was in the '90s in a mostly white part of New Haven. And it was just understood, she said, that it was her job in the family to learn to speak perfect, accentless English as soon as possible.
Jiayang Fan
And my mom and some of her peers had said, oh, you have this very narrow window in which your tongue can adjust to the new language or not, because Chinese is so different than English. And I really-- because I was seven or eight at the time, I really didn't even think of it as in the brain. I thought about it as the rigidity of my tongue. And I was so afraid of my tongue literally hardening in my mouth and not being able to contort to this language. And I think it immediately becomes a test of your ability to survive and thrive in this new environment.
Ira Glass
How well you can speak without an accent.
Jiayang Fan
Right. Like I've been told, OK, look, you're going to be living in water for the rest of your life. Well, the better you can swim, kind of-- I better get a few different kinds of strokes under my belt.
Ira Glass
And when you view that whole attitude now, like, how do you see it?
Jiayang Fan
The adult me doesn't necessarily endorse the goal of speaking accentless English and the need to fit into the perfect American ideal, whatever that is. But that was what my parents thought was necessary to protect me in a foreign country.
Ira Glass
Jiayang did the hard work of mastering the countless little subtleties of pronunciation and usage to the point where she thought she sounded more or less like native English speakers. Friends, especially white friends, told her she didn't have an accent. And when she herself had little twinges of like, oh, maybe I sound different, she shrugged it off as being too hard on herself.
Jiayang Fan
And hearing my voice on the radio, hearing myself speak, it was a very rude awakening. It was embarrassing and slightly mortifying. Like, I do sound different, even when I'm trying really, really hard not to.
Ira Glass
To be clear, the difference that she heard-- it wasn't that she had an accent like you normally think of an accent. Specifically, what she was hearing was--
Jiayang Fan
Over-enunciation. And maybe I was unattuned to how much effort there is in my most casual speech. A huge part of how I sound different is I'm so afraid that if I don't make the sound explicit, I won't be understood. And that process of making it explicit is what actually makes me sound really different, whereas--
Ira Glass
It's funny. As you're saying this sentence, I feel so aware of how every final T and every final D, you're actually enunciating.
Jiayang Fan
Right. That effortfulness is part of how I speak.
Ira Glass
OK, so we're finally getting to the reason that I'm telling you all this. One night a little while back, I ran into Jiayang at an event. And she explained all this to me and told me how since coming on our show, she was feeling self-conscious about her English in a way that she hadn't for years. But also and more importantly, she was finding herself listening to Chinese-American friends with new ears. Suddenly she was hearing the huge variations in cadence and speech that can give away that you're not a native speaker .
Jiayang Fan
It would come out in the stringing together of certain words. And I became convinced that I could tell how old someone was when they arrived in this country and started speaking English. Because the more fluidly they could pronounce certain words or ride out a cadence, the younger they must have been when they arrived.
Ira Glass
Yeah, I remember that you said to me that night if you could just hear somebody speak, you would be able to tell them how long they had been in this country or how old they were when they arrived in this country.
Jiayang Fan
Right. Their age of arrival.
Ira Glass
And I said to you at the time, challenge accepted. Do you remember? We were sitting there. I said, if I find let's say three people who moved to this country, could we have you come on the radio and you would guess how old they were when they arrived? And you could exhibit your superpower. And we would find out if, in fact, you were correct.
Jiayang Fan
Exactly. And that I could hear in their speech something that they themselves didn't even necessarily hear. And that's what made it sort of magical to me.
Ira Glass
And so that is what we're here to do today. Jiayang is going to play that game. Maybe the only way she could ever find out once and for all if indeed she can do this. We've created an entire radio game show for that purpose. Let me hear some studio audience, please.
[APPLAUSE]
And then after doing that, we tried to figure out other experiences that people have that would best be captured not the way we usually do it on our show-- following people around with microphones and recording them, interviewing them-- but in game show format. So we are very excited to bring you something we have never heard of anybody trying, namely, an entire program of stories done as game shows. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.
[APPLAUSE]
Act One: With Great Power Comes Great Pronounceability
Ira Glass
Act 1, With Great Power Comes Great Pronounceability. OK, so we came up with this game to test Jiayang's claim. And Tobin Low, one of the editors on our program-- he's also Chinese-American-- got excited about the idea and volunteered to be our Bob Barker, our Alex Trebek for the game. And so I hand it off to him.
Tobin Low
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I am Tobin Low. Hello, audience.
[APPLAUSE]
Welcome to a game we are calling Date of Arrival, in which Jiayang Fan tells you when you immigrated to the United States. Jiayang, welcome. How are you feeling? Are you feeling confident?
Jiayang Fan
I'm feeling a bit of trepidation, I have to admit. I was pumped for this, but now that the date has arrived, my Asian fear of failure is kicking in.
Tobin Low
Well, the good news is we have great guests lined up for you today. And if you guess two of them correctly, you're going to win our prize, which is a brand new car.
Jiayang Fan
This only-- this only ups the stakes and my anxiety. I'm hoping that I can channel my anxiety for success.
Tobin Low
It's all good. I have complete faith in you, Jiayang. Are you ready to hear the rules?
Jiayang Fan
Hit me.
Tobin Low
OK. So each guest is somebody who immigrated to the United States from China at some point in their life. And they have been given up to three sentences to read aloud. So each sentence contains phrases like urban and rural America. And these are phrases that, Jiayang, you picked because they can be challenging to pronounce.
Or they are sentences that be very familiar to someone who's lived here for years. And at the end of each sentence, Jiayang, you get a chance to guess at what age they came to the US. If you are within one year of the correct age, we will give you the point. Does that make sense?
Jiayang Fan
One year. I mean, that's narrow. But yes, I accept.
Tobin Low
OK, great. Well, then we are going to welcome our first guest, Luke Ma. Hi, Luke, how are you? Where are you calling in from?
Luke Ma
Hi, everyone. I'm doing lovely. I'm calling in from San Jose in California.
Tobin Low
Just for a point of reference for Jiayang, how old are you?
Luke Ma
Oh, yes. I'm 41.
Tobin Low
All right. We are going to go ahead and have you read sentence number one.
Luke Ma
All right. Here it goes. And I have to say, my Asian fear of failure is kicking in too. Now I feel like I must-- I have to stump-- I have to stump Fan Jiayang, otherwise I won't win.
[LAUGHTER]
So sentence one. The airplane flew over urban and rural America.
Tobin Low
Jiayang, hearing sentence one, are you ready to make a guess?
Jiayang Fan
Not quite, not quite. I think I need a little-- I think I'm going to need a little bit more.
Tobin Low
All right. Great.
Luke Ma
Here you go. Sentence two. Got my hands up. They're playing my song. I know I'm going to be OK. Yeah, it's a party in the USA.
Jiayang Fan
OK, great. That's more information. I'm going to have to go all the way for sentence number three. I think I'm going to need as much information as I can wrangle.
Luke Ma
All right. Sentence number three. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Jiayang Fan
OK, so can I reach for my lifeline?
Tobin Low
Yes. OK, so this is a secret lifeline that we are going to allow Jiayang to access, which is that Luke, we are going to ask you to say her name. That's all we're asking is just say her name.
Jiayang Fan
Right.
Luke Ma
Sure. Fan Jiayang.
Jiayang Fan
Oof, OK.
Tobin Low
Curveball, curveball.
Jiayang Fan
I don't know if-- I don't know if that helped or confused, because clearly he is someone--
Tobin Low
Because you don't have an ABC like me just mangling your name left and right.
Jiayang Fan
Because he obviously can speak Chinese, because he pronounced the syllables correctly, but also had a mastery of the tones. But I think I've been given all the information that is permissible. And I think I'm-- I have a number in my head.
Tobin Low
OK.
Jiayang Fan
I'm going to go with five.
Tobin Low
OK.
Jiayang Fan
The reasoning here is that Luke has nailed every single sentence. There's no micropause of anxiety when he says urban and rural America. The double R in rural is so natural. And I'm almost tempted to say that he has no accent whatsoever, which is usually the case when you come before the ages of four, five, six.
Tobin Low
OK, final answer is five.
[HORN BLOWING]
Luke, would you like to tell us at what age you moved to the states?
Luke Ma
Yeah, I moved to the States at 37. No, I moved to the States at one month before I turned nine.
Jiayang Fan
Shit.
Luke Ma
But Fan Jiayang, what you said about my accent is what I think most native speakers and other people have said, which is there doesn't seem to be a discernible accent. And yet somehow in my head, I feel like there is a difference. But I can't really verbalize exactly what that difference is.
And the only difference I've been able to hone in on in my head is the sense of the ability to drop into a kind of casual, fluid, elided tone in between syllables, where I always feel like my enunciation or the way I speak-- it's just ever so slightly 2% over-enunciated compared to native speakers.
Jiayang Fan
That makes a lot of sense to me. But having said all that, I wonder if you can hear my accent.
Luke Ma
So if I were to put it on a spectrum, I feel like the way Tobin speaks, to me, is like native beyond native. It is the most fluid, perfectly expected American sound I can imagine.
Jiayang Fan
I'm with you 100% on that. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So he is the platonic ideal.
Luke Ma
Yeah. His voice, his sound. The structure of his throat is perfect is what we're saying. No, no, if we were-- I think if it were aspirational, Tobin has achieved that last 2% to get to 100.
Jiayang Fan
He is nirvana, yes.
Tobin Low
You guys are hitting on every insecurity I've ever had of like talking to other Chinese kids and them being like, oh, wow, you are-- there's nothing there. It's absent. And just being like, OK, thanks, I guess.
Jiayang Fan
Right. Well, yes. I mean, so you hear yourself as B-plus?
Luke Ma
I mean, Asian B-plus. So I hear myself as a 97 or a 98, compared to Tobin's 100.
Jiayang Fan
OK, Asian B-plus. OK, yes. Yes.
Luke Ma
Yeah. And Fan Jiayang, for you, honestly I feel like I would put you at like a 94 or 93. Like I think this person most likely is an immigrant and probably an Asian-American immigrant.
Jiayang Fan
I actually feel very affirmed, because part of listening to yourself is this search for-- and wondering if you hear yourself correctly-- is this question of whether you exist in the same reality, in the same acoustic reality as everyone else. And you gave me like a 93. And I would give myself like a 91. So like the fact that we are both in the same ballpark kind of affirms my sense that OK, I am not crazy. And I'm not living in delusion. You are hearing myself more or less the way that I hear myself.
Tobin Low
OK, unfortunately we have to move on. Luke, thank you so much for joining us.
Luke Ma
I'm glad I could be of some use.
Tobin Low
All right, so we are on to guest number two now. So we're going to welcome Frank. Hi, Frank.
Frank
Hi.
Jiayang Fan
Hi, Frank.
Tobin Low
Frank, could I ask you to introduce yourself?
Frank
Sure. Frank Shong. I'm 55.
Tobin Low
And where are we reaching you, Frank?
Frank
In the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tobin Low
Frank, could you go ahead and read sentence number one for us?
Frank
Yeah, sentence one. The airplane flew over urban and rural America.
Tobin Low
Jiayang, after sentence one, are you ready to make a guess?
Jiayang Fan
I think I have a sense of the ballpark. But I would love additional data. So I'm going to go on to ask for the second sentence.
Frank
All right. So this is two. Got my hands up. They're playing my song. I know I'm going to be OK. Yeah, it's a party in the USA.
Tobin Low
OK, that was sentence two. How are you feeling, Jiayang?
Jiayang Fan
I think I'm ready to make a guess.
Tobin Low
Wow, OK, after sentence two. Bold move.
Jiayang Fan
I think that I would like to go with 19.
Tobin Low
OK, can you explain your reasoning?
Jiayang Fan
Sure. I could hear the way that he really lingered on urban and rural. Even though he said both those words fine, I can hear the effort. I don't think he came here as a child. And on top of that, I can detect the hint of an English accent. And I wonder if Frank is someone who either spent time in Hong Kong, which was formerly a British colony, or went through an educational system that had British English instruction. And then maybe came here as a young adult, because I can tell that he's absolutely fluent in the language.
Tobin Low
Gotcha. OK, so 19, final answer.
Jiayang Fan
Yes.
Tobin Low
OK. Here's what I'm going to say. Technically, based on the rules of the game, you got it wrong.
[HORN BLOWING]
But you're damn close. Frank came at age 22. And I am very tempted to give you the point, because of some of the reasoning you gave.
Frank
Yeah.
Tobin Low
So like maybe that's a place to start. Frank, can you talk a little bit about learning English and that process for you?
Frank
Yeah, so when I was young when they decided to put English back into the curriculum after the Cultural Revolution, we really didn't have much material from the US. So anyone who lived in China my age or above would know that's the age of the material from the BBC. And so that's where I picked up my accent.
Jiayang Fan
That's interesting. And the irony of it is that I grew up in-- I was born in '84. And I grew up when the only Chinese you were supposed to speak was state-mandated, like accentless Mandarin. Do you remember?
Frank
Yeah.
Jiayang Fan
So you weren't supposed to speak any regional accent at all. And that's the Mandarin that I speak, kind of completely devoid of any regional accent.
Frank
I disagree with that.
Jiayang Fan
Oh, really? How so?
Frank
Because in my effort to look up Jiayang's videos, I saw one of you interviewing restaurants in Chinatown.
Jiayang Fan
Yes.
Frank
So in my view, you have less of an accent in English than your accent in Chinese.
Jiayang Fan
Well, this is a plot twist. What do you mean? What do you hear in my Chinese?
Frank
For instance, the jeh che tse distinction, you don't really try to make that clear.
Tobin Low
Wow.
Jiayang Fan
Oh, wow. Yes. But you don't hear like an American accent in my Chinese.
Frank
Right. Right, not an American accent but a--
Jiayang Fan
Southern.
Frank
Right. Yes.
Jiayang Fan
Phew. Phew, Frank, because if you were going to accuse me of having an American accent--
Frank
Sorry, sorry.
Jiayang Fan
In Chinese, that was really going to throw me for a loop.
Tobin Low
And on that note--
Jiayang Fan
On that note, thank you so much, Frank. It was a real pleasure chatting.
Frank
Thank you guys.
Tobin Low
We are ready for our next guest. Please welcome Larissa. Hi, Larissa.
Larissa Jo
Hi there.
Jiayang Fan
Hi, Larissa.
Larissa Jo
Yeah, my name is Larissa Jo. I'm 35. No, wait, am I 35? I'm 34.
Tobin Low
OK, so we are ready to jump in. Larissa, if you would, could you read sentence number one?
Larissa Jo
The airplane flew over urban and rural America.
Jiayang Fan
I'm definitely going to need the second sentence, Tobin.
Tobin Low
Larissa, can you read sentence number two?
Larissa Jo
Got my hands up. They were playing my song. I know I'm going to be OK. Yeah, it's a party in the USA.
Tobin Low
OK, that's sentence two.
Jiayang Fan
Yes. And I'm going to go for sentence number three as well.
Larissa Jo
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Jiayang Fan
OK. I think I'm going to go for 10.
Tobin Low
OK.
Jiayang Fan
I'm thinking out loud. I think this one is a bit challenging.
Tobin Low
Here's what I'll offer. Would you like to talk to Larissa a little bit more before locking in your answer?
Jiayang Fan
Yes. Oh, yes, some mercy.
Tobin Low
OK. Larissa, can I prompt then? Larissa, the last time we talked, you told a story about volunteering for a local library at some point. Could you tell that story?
Larissa Jo
I was volunteering to become an audiobook recorder at the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library. This was when I lived in Seattle. And you have to audition for it. You basically just read some passages. And later the volunteer coordinator got back to me and they said, yeah, the judges, they are hesitant to accept you because they don't know where you're from. But they know you're not from around here. They know you're not American. But they can't tell where.
Jiayang Fan
That was actually really helpful. Tobin, if I may--
Tobin Low
Yes.
Jiayang Fan
I'm going to alter my guess. And I will give you my explanation. I'm going to say-- I'm deciding between 15 and 16. I just can't quite pull the trigger. I'm going to go for 16.
Tobin Low
OK, you're going for 16. You're coming up. Can you tell me a little bit why?
Jiayang Fan
It's the way she says the word song. She kind of swallows the G in a way that I don't think a native ever would. So it came out like sung, rather than song. And when that happened, my ears perked up, because that's exactly the way that my mom would have said the word song.
Tobin Low
OK, you can't see that I am squirming in my seat, because unfortunately you went the wrong direction.
Jiayang Fan
No, no.
Tobin Low
Your guess of 10 years old was closer, because the actual answer was that Larissa moved here when she was seven.
[HORN BLOWING]
Jiayang Fan
Oh, that's so frustrating, because that's the age I came here.
[LAUGHTER]
And how aware are you of your accent? I mean, do you feel like you can hear it?
Larissa Jo
I would say until that experience which was maybe seven, eight years ago with the recording book, I thought I was camouflaged. I thought I was good. And when I heard that they could tell I didn't sound like I was from the US, I felt-- I don't know, a little disappointed or a little offended. And then I spoke to my boyfriend at the time who is American, grew up in America.
And I said what, I don't have an accent. I speak really good English. And he said yes, you speak very good English. But you don't speak like an American. And I said, what do you mean? And he said for example, he slurs things. He doesn't enunciate. And then when he pointed this out, he said I enunciate everything.
Jiayang Fan
And when he said that, was that a moment of recognition? Or were you like, what are you talking about?
Larissa Jo
Yeah. That really makes sense. I think it comes from making sure I am understood in English by my parents and other immigrants, wanting them to understand me.
Jiayang Fan
Right. And I wonder if there's a part of you that wants to have no accent at all. Like ideally, would it be better just to be completely accentless?
Larissa Jo
Yeah. You know, for a long time, my experiences had made me be ashamed of it. And now I'm just like, why? Why? I don't want that. I'm going to stand up for where I come from, the things that shaped me, the things that-- even the experiences that made me enunciate. Because this is something I did to help my community. And now it's really part of me.
Jiayang Fan
Yeah. No, I really like your logic there and also kind of the evolution of your comfort with how you speak. I mean, it's so interesting to talk to you, because I do feel like I'm talking to a version of myself that brings up all my anxieties about how I speak. But also, my aspiration for self acceptance. There's something about your acceptance of your accent that I find inspirational. It is not this race to be accentless, the way that I fear I have conceived of my journey in English. Like I do feel self-conscious about it.
Tobin Low
Larissa, if there was a piece of advice for Jiayang to get to where you are, is there something that helped you get to where you are?
Jiayang Fan
Oh, that's a great question.
Larissa Jo
Yeah. So I guess maybe I would say-- so why do I have this accent? Why do I speak this way? And I say, well, it's because I lived in China for seven years. And then I say, well, if I don't want an accent, the way to not have it is to wish I hadn't lived in China. And to wish that I was maybe born in the States or something. And do I wish that? And I say, no, I don't wish that. So I want the experiences that also gave me this side effect of the way I speak. And they're an emblem, they're like a memory of that.
Jiayang Fan
Thank you, Larissa. You are-- I feel like I'm meeting my future self, the person that I would-- the comfort with my accent that I am aspiring to be. So it's been a real pleasure to talk.
Tobin Low
OK. So three contestants. I hate to add insult to injury. But I do have to say your score was zero for three. Maybe this is the time I should tell you, you will not be winning the brand new car. But also the car was going to be just a rental that we were going to give to you for the weekend.
Jiayang Fan
You've spared me from having to wrangle a friend into being my driver for the rental.
Tobin Low
Well, Jiayang, thank you for playing our game. I would say see you next time, but I think we've learned that this game is impossible. And we would discourage it. No one should ever play this game ever again. Shut it down. Good night, audience. We'll see you not next time.
Jiayang Fan
Thank you, Tobin.
Ira Glass
Tobin Low is one of the editors of our show. Coming up, can a simple game show save the world? We find out. That's in a minute. Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.
Act Two: You Bet Your Planet’s Life!
Ira Glass
It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, it's a game show. An entire program of stories presented not the way we usually do, but as game shows, radio game shows. We've arrived at Act Two of our show. And we're calling Act Two--
George Gray
You Bet Your Planet's Life.
Ira Glass
That's George Gray, who agreed to take a little time out from his day job as the announcer of The Price Is Right to help us with this next game. And before I get to it, I should explain that this one comes from a question that I have had myself about this thing that I've seen in the news. You know the Paris Agreement on climate change and how it has these goals that countries are supposed to meet if we're going to hold the planet to less than two degrees of warming overall and ideally just 1.5 degrees of warming?
And I've wondered for a while now. Is there any chance at all, any chance, that the United States is going to make the goals? Like forget about the rest of the world for a minute. Just talking about the part of this that we in this country control. Will we as a country, one of the biggest carbon emitters, will we make our goal?
To do that, we would have to cut our emissions by 50% by the year 2030 for starters. That's just eight years from now. Is there any kind of realistic path that gets us there? Well, today's game show episode seemed like a perfect opportunity to finally find out. And so with that in mind, we turn to our next game show.
George Gray
Welcome to You Bet Your Planet's Life. Is there any chance at all, ladies and gentlemen, that we will actually make our goals and cut our emissions to half? Well, stay tuned, because today we find out and win valuable prizes.
Ira Glass
Well, thank you, George Gray, for that nice intro. And why don't we bring on today's contestant?
George Gray
Well, Ira, hailing from New York City and Austin, Texas, director of research at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, she's modeled parts of the climate and energy future and worked around the globe for the US government, the International Energy Agency and the Asia-Pacific Energy Research Center. Say that three times fast. Please welcome Melissa Lott. Come on down.
Ira Glass
Well, welcome, Melissa. And I hope you're ready to play.
Melissa Lott
I'm excited, Ira. Ready to go.
Ira Glass
Now I understand that you are a super taster. Was there a moment where you discovered that?
Melissa Lott
There was a moment. I was eating a piece of chocolate. And I went to my friend, I think this one's from Ecuador. And they went, how on earth do you know that? And I said, well, it's so different than the other one. They're like, no, it's not. They don't taste different. And I was like, they are completely different. And they ran off and got a bunch of different ones for me to try. It turns out I can tell the difference blindfolded.
Ira Glass
Well, those are skills that will not aid you in our game today.
Melissa Lott
Probably not.
Ira Glass
And let me ask you to take a look up there in the big board, because in this first round, here's what we're going to do. We're going to try to get to 50% cuts in emissions by the year 2030. Or to be very precise about this, our country's goal for the Paris Agreement is to cut 50 to 52% of where our emissions were back in the year 2005.
And Melissa, in each of your turns that we're going to do, you will propose a number for the amount of emissions that you think we can cut. And then you'll explain how you think we can cut it. If the judges rule that that's credible, if there's reasonable evidence that your proposal could work at the scale and speed you say it could, you will hear this sound.
[DING]
And it goes up on the board. If the judges think your plan is bogus, malarkey, impossible, you will hear this sound.
[BUZZ]
And we all take one step closer to planetary disaster. No pressure.
Melissa Lott
No pressure at all.
Ira Glass
And George, where do we start?
George Gray
Well, Ira, Melissa's starting our game with 25% already on the board.
Ira Glass
So George, maybe you should explain exactly what that's about. Because this surprised me. I really didn't know this before we all started working on this game show.
George Gray
I'd love to, Ira. Since 2005, we've already reduced our emissions around 18%. That's because of cheap wind power, cheap solar power, cheap natural gas replacing coal. And because states, local communities, and big corporations are making moves to lower their emissions. But wait, there's more. Another 7% or so is locked in and ready to roll by the end of the decade. All told, 18% plus 7% gives you-- carry the 1, move it over to 2-- 25 big percentage points.
Ira Glass
Yeah, that was news to me. Our emissions have been going down ever since 2007 in this country. But what that means is we are already halfway to our goal of 50% by 2030 before we even start our game.
George Gray
That's right, Ira.
Ira Glass
So Melissa, your goal is to credibly get us the next 25% on top of that in just eight years. And let's just jump in. How much do you want to put on the board for your first turn?
Melissa Lott
So I'm going to go for another 15%.
Ira Glass
OK, 15%. And how are you going to get that 15%?
Melissa Lott
So I think that President Biden's big climate and energy law is going to actually get us all the way to that 15%.
Ira Glass
Is that true? It'll get us that much?
Melissa Lott
Yeah, so it's called the Inflation Reduction Act. But really, it's the biggest energy and climate legislation we've ever passed. It's massive.
Ira Glass
And so how does it do that?
Melissa Lott
So it's a whole host of different things. It's tax credits supporting clean electricity. So I'm talking about solar and wind and nuclear, all the stuff we need to produce zero carbon electricity. And then it gives us a lot of tax credits to bring a lot of electric vehicles on the road. There's tax credits for businesses to help them insulate their buildings, let's say, so they can use less energy in the first place. And there's tax credits for capturing carbon before it actually goes into the atmosphere when we're making stuff like concrete and cement.
Ira Glass
Wait, is concrete and cement actually kind of a big deal?
Melissa Lott
Yeah, it's huge. It's really huge.
Ira Glass
OK, so you're saying that all these things, they'll add up. And these things together get us to 15% of our goals under the Paris Agreement.
Melissa Lott
So some people are saying 10%. Some are saying 20%. I'm good with 15%, right in the middle.
Ira Glass
All right. Let's turn to our judges and see what they say.
George Gray
Oh, Ira, the judges say yes.
[DING]
Ira Glass
So George, what's Melissa's score?
George Gray
Well, Ira, the big board is at 40%, which means she needs another 10% to reach our goal of 50% emissions cut.
Ira Glass
OK, so now it is your second turn, Melissa. In your second turn, how much do you want to put on the board?
Melissa Lott
I think I'm going to go for it and put up a whole 10%. I'm going to go all the way to 50%.
Ira Glass
OK, all right. Going all the way. Daring. What do you got?
Melissa Lott
OK, so I should say right off the bat that what I have is a whole hodgepodge of stuff. So it's a lot of different things. And so what I'm looking at doing is saying where do we already have momentum? Where are we already moving and we just need to move a little bit faster? So squeeze a couple more percentage points out of the things that are already working for us.
Ira Glass
OK, which means what?
Melissa Lott
So this means three buckets to me. So the first one is electricity. So it's doing all the stuff that's in the Inflation Reduction Act, but pushing it further. Building more solar, more wind, more nuclear, storing more electricity.
Ira Glass
OK, bucket two.
Melissa Lott
So bucket two is about working with just a few big industries. So the ones that produce a lot of greenhouse gases. How do we work with them to get their emissions down really quickly?
Ira Glass
So for example?
Melissa Lott
Steel's a good example. We make steel with coal today, but we can make it with electricity. So let's do that.
Ira Glass
OK, bucket three.
Melissa Lott
So bucket three, I'm thinking about waste. So there's two big things that I want us to stop wasting and that would get us a few more percentage points. So the first part of this is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions that we just are throwing in the atmosphere. We're just wasting them. The big one here is methane. So it's fixing leaky pipes. It's about plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, stopping putting methane into the atmosphere.
Ira Glass
And the second kind?
Melissa Lott
The second kind of waste is the waste we have when it comes to zero carbon electricity. So we've already built a lot of wind turbines, a lot of nuclear power plants, a lot of solar panels. And we're not using all that at zero carbon electricity. We're just wasting a lot of it.
Ira Glass
Like why?
Melissa Lott
There's a bunch of different reasons. But it comes down to supply and demand not matching up.
Ira Glass
Is this a thing of like-- the solar energy gets made, but there's no way to store it and there's no way to get it to the homes where it's needed? Is that what you mean?
Melissa Lott
Yeah. And that's like-- it's such a waste, Ira. It's like, we already paid for it. It's already there. And we're not using it.
Ira Glass
And so to fix that, what do we do?
Melissa Lott
So to fix that, we build a lot of wires to move the stuff around. And then we also figure out ways to store that electricity.
Ira Glass
OK, so between those three buckets, you're saying that adds up to 10%. Can I ask you in the most real way possible, do you think that's actually going to happen? Are we actually going to get to 50% by 2030?
Melissa Lott
I think we're going to get close. I don't know if we're going to get all the way there. I mean, we could overshoot it, honestly. There's a lot of different factors that go into that, including behavior, including broader things that are happening in the world that I have no insight into.
What's going to keep us from maybe getting there as fast as we want is all the non-technical stuff. So being able to actually build something, get it permitted, get it paid for in our markets. I think it's going to be close. I don't know if we're going to get over the 50% line in time, though.
Ira Glass
All right. Well, judges, what do you think?
George Gray
Oh, wait. Wait, is this coming in? The judges say yes.
Ira Glass
Well, congratulations, Melissa, for winning round one.
Melissa Lott
Thank you, Ira. Thank you, George. I appreciate it. But remember, this is only round one. There's another round after this.
Ira Glass
Well, exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say. You progressed to our bonus round. Let's talk about that next round, because the first goal that America set for itself with the Paris Agreement is to cut 50% of our emissions by 2030. But the bigger goal is to cut all greenhouse gases as far as possible to get to net zero by 2050. In your view, is there a credible path towards that that you can imagine actually happening?
Melissa Lott
There's definitely a credible path. I think there is. But like with the next eight years, it's going to be challenging and it requires us to make a choice to get on that path. And a lot of it is just doing a lot more of what we've already been talking about.
Not just making more buildings more energy efficient. We're making every single building more energy efficient. We're electrifying those buildings. We're pulling all the emissions out of those buildings. We're getting every single car and truck and bus and plane to zero emissions. Every single thing in our transportation.
Ira Glass
When you say it this way, it just seems so big. It's hard to fathom that that could actually happen.
Melissa Lott
I mean, it's massive. It is massive. It is a huge, huge undertaking. Some people describe it as like a wartime effort. I think that's right. Like it's massive to do this over the next just few decades. We're talking about 2050. That's not that long from now.
Ira Glass
Well, that makes me feel not so super hopeful, just to say.
Melissa Lott
But if we don't actually get there, we know the costs of inaction, of not moving there. And they're not pretty. So I'm talking about extreme events that flood Houston, or you know, swing across Florida. Heat waves in Southern California that lead to people dying. When you start to add up all these health costs and also the insurance costs, the cost of rebuilding homes, it's so much larger than building solar panels and nuclear power plants and retrofitting buildings and replacing cars.
Ira Glass
Well, listen, thank you so much for playing our game. Let's bring in some inappropriately cheerful game show music. And George, tell her what she's won.
George Gray
Well, Melissa, how about a brand new SUV? Ooh. Two plane tickets to-- ugh. A subscription to Diesel and Steak Lovers magazine.
Ira Glass
What else you got there, buddy?
George Gray
Well, Melissa, this is perfect. How about autographed copies of the collected works of Bill McKibben?
Ira Glass
That's more like it. Well, listen, thanks again, Melissa. And George, take it away.
George Gray
Thanks so much, everybody. And we'll see you next time, if we're not all fleeing a wildfire or hurricane on You Bet Your Planet's Life.
Act Three: You Didn’t Hear It From Me. No, Really. You Didn’t.
Ira Glass
Act 3-- You Didn't Hear It From Me. No, really, you didn't. This last game actually happened on another show, a podcast called Normal Gossip. And if you haven't heard Normal Gossip, the way it works, people in the show basically dish about actual gossip. Like true stories about normal, everyday people sent in by listeners.
And last season, the producers recreated a version of-- you know that old game, telephone, where somebody whispers something to the person next to them who whispers it to the person next to them and on down the line. One of our producers, Sean Cole, has this rundown of what happened when they did a version of that on Normal Gossip and how it revealed some interesting things about the stories that we tell each other. Here's Sean.
Sean Cole
The folks at Normal Gossip, they created the game for a very practical reason. While they were gearing up for season two, they got to talking about how long it had taken during season one for the guests to relax and settle into the conversation.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
And so we were having this brainstorming session where we were talking about ways that we could just give them some more time and space ahead of the recording to loosen up.
Sean Cole
This is the producer of Normal Gossip, Alex Sujong Laughlin.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
And I came up with this idea that what if we had them play a game that is a game of gossip?
Sean Cole
Gossip itself, of course, is sort of like a game of telephone. So they figured, let's just do that. Alex grabbed one of the gossip stories from their inbox and read it to the first guest that they had. And then recorded her telling it right back, just whatever that person could remember, played that for the second guest, had them tell it back and so on.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
I told them not to take notes, because you don't generally take notes when somebody's telling you a gossip story, right? You're not like--
Sean Cole
Unless you're a gossip columnist, I suppose.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
Yeah, exactly. Unless you're me. So yeah, I said do the best you can. If you don't remember something, that's fine. If you feel like tweaking a detail for fun, you can.
Sean Cole
But for the most part, try and be pretty faithful to the story you heard. Alex didn't really expect anything interesting to happen. But then when she listened through to all the versions, she realized she was seeing in real time how gossip works, how a story can evolve and change. That there was a logic to how it changed.
Sure, there was some willy-nilly embellishing here and there. But for the most part, the changes were for a very specific reason. And I'm going to get to that. But first, you need to hear the original version of the story, so that you can appreciate when we get there how different it was by the end of the game.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
Yes, I have the text here.
Sean Cole
I asked Alex to read it to me. I should say with every gossip story they tell on the show, the names and all the identifying details are changed. So it's completely anonymized. This story concerns two people who they called Kyle and Elliot. They started dating sometime before the pandemic.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
Kyle had grown up super religious and had been married to a woman. But he came out, left his family, left the church, and moved to the city where he met Elliot.
Sean Cole
And Elliot's really the main character of the story. You need to know that he's part of this active group chat with some college friends where they talk about their lives.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
Everyone in the group chat was obsessed with Kyle. He was so warm, genuine, thoughtful. They move in together, adopt a cat, and are teaching it all kinds of tricks. Then Elliot proposes and Kyle proposes back. It's so adorable. The pandemic hits. And the group chat starts doing Zooms as you do. Usually, significant others pop in and say hi. And they all love to see Kyle.
Around June, Elliot mentions that he's going home for a bit, doesn't mention Kyle. A few weeks later, the group Zooms and Kyle doesn't show up. They ask where he is. Elliot says, I didn't want to bring this up yet, but Kyle has actually left me. Turns out Kyle just packed up and disappeared. Left the cat, no explanation, ghosted his fiance. He disappeared off social media. And nobody knows where he went. Elliot is crushed.
So fast forward a year later. A friend of a friend is scrolling TikTok. And suddenly they see a viral video with Kyle. Turns out Kyle has reinvented himself on TikTok in the last year. He's suddenly super religious, but also still very much queer. He seems to spend his videos making a lot of references to leaving a toxic relationship and loving yourself. Our friend of a friend is like, what the fuck? Kyle has millions of views, tons of followers. Now we've tracked him down, but he's obviously obliquely talking shit about Elliot. What do you do? Do you tell Elliot?
Sean Cole
It ends with sort of a Dear Abby conundrum type question there. Anyway, that's where we start. There were eight guests listening to and repeating back some version of this story over the course of an eight week season. It was quite literally a long game. And I'll just tell you right now. The only parts of the story that didn't change practically at all were the very beginning.
Woman
There were two guys in a relationship together.
Woman
Two guys. There is Elliot and there's Kyle, right?
Man
A gay couple.
Woman
Elliot--
Man
Elliot and Kyle.
Woman
Meets Kyle.
Man
They start dating. They like each other. They move in together.
Sean Cole
And the very end, where the friends see the TikTok video and ask themselves the question.
Woman
And the question is--
Man
Do we tell Elliot or not?
Woman
Do we tell Elliot?
Man
Should we tell him--
Man
About this TikTok?
Woman
They don't know what they're supposed to do.
Woman
Yeah, would you tell Elliot?
Man
I'd tell Elliot in a heartbeat.
Sean Cole
Almost everything else became completely unrecognizable. By the way, Tobin Low, who was in Act 1, happened to be a guest on Normal Gossip when they did this. Maybe you heard his voice in there. With the first couple of folks, the changes are relatively small. The very first guest, Danielle Henderson-- she's a TV writer-- she inserts this scene where Elliot discovers that Kyle has left.
Danielle Henderson
And then he goes back to their apartment that they share, their place that they share. And Kyle is gone. He has packed up everything.
Sean Cole
But it's still the same plot as the original. The second person, Kalyn Kahler, who writes about sports-- when she heard Danielle say that Kyle packed up everything, seems to have taken that to mean everything.
Kalyn Kahler
Kyle is gone. The apartment is empty. There is no note. There is no trace of Kyle. It's like he never lived there. He probably took all his furniture and food and whatever.
Sean Cole
She also-- I think inadvertently-- leaves out a pretty important detail at the end, the fact that Kyle is still gay. Probably just didn't think to mention it. Besides that, she casually ad libs this kind of loose dialogue in the beginning where Elliot's friends are all aflutter about meeting Kyle.
Kalyn Kahler
Everyone is very curious, like who's Kyle? Elliot, introduce us to Kyle. We want to meet your new boyfriend. Like you're so happy, how are things going?
Sean Cole
But those few alterations set us up for some real misunderstandings that are about to take off with the third person, Tracy Clayton of the podcast Strong Black Legends. She hears this part.
Kalyn Kahler
Everyone is very curious, like who's Kyle? Elliot, introduce us to Kyle.
Sean Cole
And takes it to mean that the friend group never does meet Kyle, which is very different. That and the missing detail of Kyle still being gay leads to this ending from Tracy. Again, the friends are scrolling TikTok.
Tracy Clayton
And so they come across a TikTok of a very evangelical, like born-again Christian, very strict. Everything that's not in the Bible is wrong type of person. And he's just going off and saying all of this terrible stuff. And probably very anti-trans, anti anti-racism, anti-everything good. And it's just going off about all this wild stuff. But then this man starts talking about this terrible, toxic relationship that he was in. And dropping all these hints, but not really saying too much, so nobody really knew if he was talking about Elliot or not. But the friends are like, he's definitely talking about Elliot. That's so fucked up.
Sean Cole
Also, this new, somewhat more sinister version of Kyle took even more from the apartment than he did before.
Tracy Clayton
The cat is gone.
Sean Cole
First mention of Kyle taking the cat with him. All of those embellishments are crystallized and even built upon in the fourth iteration of the story, which is sort of tag team told by Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, who host another gossip podcast called Who? Weekly. More than anyone else, they really tried to imagine themselves into the heads of the friend group. Like when Elliot tells them, I just moved in with this guy Kyle and we got a cat together.
Lindsey Weber
And his friends are assumedly like, who? How do we not know this person? Why-- you moved in with somebody. You got a cat with them. And we don't even know who it is. But you know what, we're so happy for you. We're going to feel positive about this. This is how I would feel, I guess, if a friend of mine did this to me. Although I would be a little mad, but that's OK. That's my thing. Not these people--
Bobby Finger
I'd feel a little sus. In the back of my head, I'd be a little sus.
Lindsey Weber
Yeah, because you can't just drop in the group chat that's active all fucking day long, oh, hey, by the way, I live with someone and we have a cat.
Bobby Finger
Yeah, I get the feeling the friends haven't even like seen a photo-- or the friends have seen a photo. Wait, no, the friends have not seen a photo. I think the friends never even saw a photo of this person.
Lindsey Weber
Bobby, we're telling the story. It's our story, so you can say that if you just want to say.
Bobby Finger
The friends never saw a photo of this person. They don't even know what this person looks like. They just know their name is Kyle.
Sean Cole
You get the sense, listening to Bobby and Lindsey, that they know they're embellishing some of the details. But they're also hewing pretty closely to the basic plot points they heard in Tracy Clayton's version. So Kyle robs Elliot blind, takes the cat. Elliot's crushed. The friends are trying to be supportive.
Bobby Finger
The friends are-- one of them, at least, is on their TikTok page on their FYP--
Sean Cole
FYP is the For You page.
Bobby Finger
And on the FYP is a video of an evangelical TikTok influencer who is apparently extremely religious, extremely fundamentalist, has really problematic opinions--
Lindsey Weber
And is viral.
Bobby Finger
And is like, here's my lifestyle. I'm viral for these horrible opinions. Oh, look at my cute cat Greg. And then the friends are like, wait--
Lindsey Weber
Wait, I have another twist. He's like, I'm straight. That's the--
Bobby Finger
Right. Yes.
Lindsey Weber
Like he's like, I was in this awful relationship, but I found God. Here's my cat, Greg.
Bobby Finger
I'm straight.
Lindsey Weber
And my ex was toxic. And the friends see the TikTok and they're sharing it. And they're like, is this about Elliot?
Sean Cole
This, of course, is a huge change. They're naming the cat Greg. I'm kidding. The fact of Kyle now being straight. Funnily, this is the first iteration of the story where the detail of Kyle being previously married to a woman was left out. So in the original, Kyle was with a woman in the beginning of the story. Now he's with women at the end. And more and more, Kyle is becoming a villain. Until by the fifth telling of the story, he's out and out malicious, even criminal. That version, the fifth one, was the one told by our very own Tobin Low.
Tobin Low
They are also getting a cat together. Let's call the cat Mr. Mistoffelees from Cats the musical, as one does.
Sean Cole
And I know this will sound biased because I work with him. But his version is really one of my favorites in this reverse Groundhog Day movie about Elliot and Kyle.
Tobin Low
Cut to one of his friends in the middle of the night scrolling through TikTok, as one does, comes across a TikTok on their For You page. And it is this guy talking about how he catfishes people. His whole thing is that he pretends to be gay. He gets in these relationships.
He's actually like a very religious, conservative person. And so he's like catfishing these dudes to be in relationships with him. And it's all a sham. It's all a sham. And so then he goes into like I recently did this to a guy. We got a cat together, Mr. Mistoffelees. And then I took him for all he's worth. And actually, it was a really bad toxic relationship.
Sean Cole
Did you hear what happened there? Basically, Tobin took these loose facts from Bobby and Lindsey's telling-- the empty apartment, Kyle being straight, and very religious and conservative-- and he combines all those things.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
Into a catfishing scam artist, who is not only doing that, but bragging about it on TikTok.
Sean Cole
This is Alex again, the Normal Gossip producer.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
Which seems to me like-- honestly, this is the turn that makes the least logical sense to me. Sorry, Tobin. But like if he's a scam artist, why would you be bragging about it? Then your scam is ruined. You know?
Sean Cole
I hadn't even thought of that.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
And it's funny, because Tobin has said multiple times, he thought he was telling it perfectly.
Tobin Low
I stand by what I said. I thought that I told it exactly as it was told to me.
Sean Cole
This, of course, is my colleague Tobin Low. He deigned to consent to an interview for this story.
Tobin Low
And if you had asked me afterwards, the only liberty I was very conscious of taking was changing the cat's name, which I thought was just fun and harmless.
Sean Cole
To be fair, Bobby did use the word scam one time in his and Lindsey's telling of the story. But there was nothing about catfishing. And certainly no mention of multiple victims of same. Tobin ultimately heard the original version of the story. And I had to wonder what he thought about it.
Tobin Low
I think I was surprised that they were happy at one point. Or like they had a really good relationship.
Sean Cole
Right.
Tobin Low
I think that I would have assumed that that would survive in some way in the retellings. The original's just kind of sad. And then it becomes extraordinary in a way that like by the end, people's hurt is not the focus.
Sean Cole
Yeah.
Tobin Low
It's like sort of how wild people's actions are and like you've sort of drifted far away from the original, smaller, more human hurt.
Sean Cole
And he has a theory as to how they all collectively got there.
Tobin Low
In retrospect, I think what happened is that everyone knew that there was this thing coming in the story where Kyle was going to leave Elliot. And that's sort of like-- all roads lead to this big moment in the story. And I think to some degree, we were all reverse engineering to that moment. Like how do you explain the beats of what happened? How do you explain everyone's actions, so that that makes sense and lands really hard?
Sean Cole
Right.
Tobin Low
So that you recreate the same gasp that you had when you heard it.
Sean Cole
Right.
Tobin Low
So that I can create that moment again.
Sean Cole
Because in the original, there is no explanation. And you're just kind of like, what the heck?
Tobin Low
Yes.
Sean Cole
And that's an uncomfortable feeling.
Tobin Low
Right, exactly.
Sean Cole
Just like it is in life. But of course, as Tobin had to remind me, the original story is life. That version wasn't part of a game. It really happened. Weirdly, there was only one more major change to the story after Tobin's version. When the comedian Brian Park tells it next, the guy in the TikTok video is not Kyle but one of Kyle's many unsuspecting victims, warning other TikTokers to watch out for this predator, which of course, makes a lot more sense. Oh, and there's no mention of them getting a cat.
And then the two versions after that are basically identical to Brian's. It's like there were no more questions to be answered. No gaps in understanding. All of the reverse engineering Tobin talked about was complete, which makes you wonder if there's a natural end to a game like this. If you can only retell the story so many times before it plateaus, stays static.
I bet you that happens to urban myths, too. Alex Sujong Laughlin says watching the story go through all of those changes was kind of thrilling. It was like seeing your own little monster come alive on the laboratory table. But by the last couple two, three versions of the story, she had this other feeling as well.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
It makes me feel sad.
Sean Cole
Why?
Alex Sujong Laughlin
It makes me think of the way that people become caricatures to each other. And it just feels like, you know, I don't know. Not to be all didactic and stuff, but we're talking the night before election day. And I've watched this play out for months, the way that people just get flattened into you know, conservative rednecks who hate everybody or radical feminazis who want to kill babies.
Sean Cole
Right.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
And it just-- it bums me out to see it happen so quickly, even in such a low stakes story.
Sean Cole
It's sort of like all of us are playing the game, all the time.
Alex Sujong Laughlin
Yeah. And like maybe in those moments when you feel like you want to jump to a conclusion or flatten somebody because it makes the story better, maybe don't. You know? Maybe don't. I don't know. I would like to create fewer of these monster Kyles, even if they're fictional.
Sean Cole
That seems like a worthy slogan on behalf of decency and fairness to others. Let's create fewer monster Kyles. Only a handful of people in the world would understand what it means, of course. But just like the juiciest gossip, maybe it would spread.
Ira Glass
Sean Cole is one of the producers of our program. To hear the full episode that Normal Gossip did where all this plays out, you can find that and their other episodes wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, the friends did tell Elliot about the TikTok. He laughed.
Credits
Ira Glass
Our program was produced today by Tobin Low. People who put together today's show include Elna Baker, Chris Benderev, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Michal Comite, Aviva DeKornfeld, Valerie Kipnis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Charlotte Sleeper, Lilly Sullivan, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry.
Special thanks today to John Bistline, Cen Qian, Justin Ellis, Kelsey McKinney, Jae Towle-Viera, and Geoff Triplett. Melissa Lott, our contestant in the climate game show-- she has a podcast of her own, The Big Switch, about the transition to a net zero world. Our website, where right now you can find all kinds of merch-- onesies, t-shirts, sweatshirts, Public Radio tattoos for your holiday shopping-- thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Special thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He's actually on his way to the office right now, probably because I sent him this.
George Gray
Torey Malatia, come on down. You're the next contestant on This American Life.
Ira Glass
I'm Ira Glass. Back next week, with more stories of This American Life.